


Cometh Such Rending of Certainties

by illumynare



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Books of Sorrow, Gen, Just Seriously So Much Spinfoil, Osmium Family Feels, Spinfoil Hat Theory, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 21:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5513375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illumynare/pseuds/illumynare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mara Sov is the nineteenth Queen of the Awoken.</p><p>The Awoken have only ever had one Queen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cometh Such Rending of Certainties

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hokuto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/gifts).



> This is a Yuletide Treat, because I saw the letter and oh hi I'm obsessed with Mara Sov as well.

**Verse 19:1 — all endings are beginnings**

Mara Sov is the nineteenth Queen of the Awoken.

It is a bloody, terrible business, creating a new Queen. The birth of an Awoken is never easy, but this is a different matter entirely. Most of the Techeun witches are too young to have seen it done before, and they tremble as the child screams.

Illyn, mother of the coven, lends them strength. She sings a song of resolution, of loyalty beyond death. Loyalty that will ensure death, to create undying glory.

(She alone of the coven has seen visions of a world where a queen's ascension was easy, where eating of the mother-jelly was enough. But that world is lost in grief and ruin.)

The Harbinger Minds are gathered around them in a ring, whispering. The Techeun witches keen. Illyn lifts her hands, and with the ascendant sword, she pierces the child's heart.

From beyond the Veil, something moves. A light dawns in the child's eyes.

When the blade leaves her body, Mara Sov draws her first breath. She is no longer alone in her mind.

This is the essential truth, the secret that keeps them safe:

The Awoken have only ever had one Queen.

 

**Verse 1:7 — with eyes like hot needles**

Savathûn is becoming tired of her new toy. Quria, Blade Transform—the Vex Mind given to her by Oryx—has made several attempts to escape. It deduced the sword logic long ago, and it has learned to simulate earlier versions of the Hive gods: an Aurash who has not yet taken a worm and become Oryx, a Sathona who has not yet become Savathûn.

None of these simulations have been successful. Savathûn is the deceitful queen and she is not subject to the lies of others.

However, Quria is growing more skillful at reading her timeline. It detects a period after their taking of the worm, before Oryx mastered the Deep, when his name was Auryx and he was driven catatonic with doubt.

Quria manifests this Auryx.

Savathûn sees her brother crippled with pain and remembers: _Yes, there was a time when Auryx doubted and I was sure._ But his doubts then were born of sorrow, while the her questions now rise from a lack of strict, eternal proof.

She prepares to kill this simulation, slowly, out of the love she has for her brother.

Quria clatters in excitement. This is the closest it has come to producing an effect upon her.

It manifests the seventh iteration of Sathona it has attempted. This is the first time that it has manifested two children of the Osmium King at the same time.

 

**Verse 19:3 — master of crows**

Other Queens have had brothers before her. Though honored, they have never amounted to much.

Uldren is extraordinary. He is Awoken already, but in a useless fashion: twinned to a lesser mind, a pale shadow lazily channelled through a single Harbinger. And yet his fearless achievements in battle! His complete obedience!

Some dare to murmur that the Queen is too partial to her brother. It is true that one part of Mara Sov remembers the days when she was not yet herself, not fully Awoken, when there was light in his eyes and not hers; days when he was the older one, when he sheltered her in his arms and said _thou_ to her, though no proper Awoken should address the incomplete that way.

She remembers, but it does not befit her to care about such memories. So she does not.

This befits a Queen: to make plans for her rule.

Mara Sov is the nineteenth Queen of the Awoken. She will be the last. In her the Queenship with be made final, complete. In her the long bargain will be fulfilled, the last question answered.

Preparations are necessary. Her brother is necessary. She knows this when he returns to her from Mars, when he tells her, "Your Grace, I have found the Black Garden."

She looks at his bowed head, and she remembers other days when she was not herself. When she sailed in a needle ship with two sisters, and one of them was curious to know all secrets, to cut open the beating heart of the world.

"Rise," she says. "For this, you will be Master of Crows. If you can bear the ascension."

In blood and pain and the fire of the Harbinger Minds, Uldren is reborn. In the silence that follows after, she whispers, _Listen closely, O thou brother mine._

And she tells him who he was, and who he will be.

 

**Verse 1:8 — the debate of Savathûn and Sathona**

Savathûn: Tell me why you attempted to comfort the simulation of Auryx overcome by his weakness. He deserved that sword I put through his simulated head.

Sathona: He was my brother. Have you forgotten when we escaped together in the needle ship? When all the Fundament was against us, and only our love for one another kept us alive?

Savathûn: Have you forgotten our hatred of Taox? My curiosity, Xi Ro's ferocity, Aurash's will? These are the clean, pure things that kept us alive.

Sathona: Myself-that-will-be, I don't think you're so sure of this path. Or why are you still debating me? You're seeking a further proof. You think you might still be wrong.

Savathûn: Myself-that-was, I am the proof. My two siblings and I are the strongest things that live. We have crushed every foe that turned against us. Even the Worm God Akka, my brother Oryx overthrew so that he could find the power of the Deep. By living, we prove we are worthy to live! And if anything kills us, it proves that what can be killed, deserves to die.

Sathona: You are quite clever, O Savathûn! I admit I can't keep up.

Savathûn: I know the taste of flattery, O Sathona. I have used it to destroy whole worlds. Tell me, what trap are you trying to lay?

Sathona: It's not a trap, Mother of Lies. It's just an observation. You say that your life is the proof, but that's a long, slow way to prove anything.

Savathûn: And you, fragile simulation of a Vex Mind, you think that you can prove anything faster?

Sathona: Aren't I a proof as well? It seems to me you haven't realized the power that Quria has and you don't. It can simulate a thousand possible answers, while you're living only one.

Savathûn: The Vex are utterly unable to defeat us. Their answers are irrelevant.

Sathona: But that's because they haven't mastered the paracausal power of the Deep. You could add that power to Quria. You could simulate and learn all the answers in the universe, O Wise One! And then you'd finally be more powerful than Oryx.

 

**Verse 19:7 — a beautiful creation**

Mara has watched Petra Venj for a long time. The young Corsair is fierce, despite her base birth. She burns with loyalty for the Queen, and with longing to join the True Awoken, those who have been rendered double and so complete.

When Petra drags Veliniks captive before her throne, Mara decides it is time.

"It has served us well," she says, using the pronoun their language reserves for those still trapped alone in their bodies. "Bring it before the Coven. Let it be Awoken."

Petra screams a long time. It's like this, when they are Awoken as adults. Mara holds her until she is quiet, and then she whispers into her ear, "Creation is built on secrets and the encryptions that keep those secrets safe."

And silently, into the depths of Petra's dazed, now-doubled mind, she says, _Thy_ _name is Xi Ro. Thou wert once the youngest daughter of the Osmium King._

Her sister's eyes flutter open.

"We are a beautiful creation," says Sathona, Queen of the Awoken. "And we must keep ourselves very safe."

 

**Verse 1:12 — the bargain of Savathûn and Sathona**

FIRST. This will be a secret between the two of us. Savathûn will not tell Oryx or Xivu Arath. Sathona will not attempt to gain ontological independence and escape.

SECOND. A thing is not secret, if the Worm Gods or the Deep know it.

THIRD. Isn't it lucky, then, that we have a Vex mind capable of simulating infinite things? And here, on the other side of the black hole, haven't we found refugees of a new race? And these humans, haven't they already been touched by the light of the Sky?

FOURTH. So Quria will continue to sit in Savathûn's throne world, and it will spin such a perfect simulation that even Savathûn's worm will be tricked, and think he's eating destruction.

FIFTH. And these humans, these creatures that smell of the Sky, we'll change them. We'll break off Harbinger Minds from Quria, and we'll use them to channel simulations of Savathûn's court. And each simulation, we'll bind to a human. We'll make one being out of them, twice-paracausal, filled with the power of the Sky and the Deep, so it can sing both starlight and the dark.

SIXTH. Because this is an answer that hasn't been tried yet.

SEVENTH. And Sathona will join with one of these humans we've Awoken. And she will be queen for nineteen generations.

EIGHTH. Then she will return to Savathûn, and render an account.

NINTH. And whatever we've learned from this, we'll make the law of the world.

 

**Verse 19:9 — starlight was my mother**

"I know what you are," says Eris Morn.

They are alone now. There are parts of the plan that must lie only between the two of them. It's no business of Osiris, while the Techeuns will learn all they need from Mara's thoughts. And Uldren cannot be permitted to hear. Aurash burns too brightly in him; he'll try to reshape the world, just to keep her safe.

"It is not entirely different from what _you_ are," says Mara Sov.

She grants Eris the pronoun _,_ because the former Guardian is doubled as well, bound to a maimed worm. It's a filthy, weak sort of twin, but it suffices to make her real.

"I have chosen, no matter what I am, to stand against the Dark." Eris stares at her with triple eyes. "Have you?"

It's a great impudence. She deserves to die for it. But Mara chooses to be amused.

"I remember billions of years," she says. "I have crushed countless civilizations. You Guardians—your Tower, your Traveller—you are nothing new. Before the Taken King, you will fall."

Eris waits. She is not noticeably afraid. Both Mara and Sathona approve.

"But the Reef? The Awoken? This beautiful creation of both starlight and dark? I swear to you by the Osmium Throne, I will destroy anything that threatens it. And the Dark will not allow us to exist."

Eris bows low. "Then I will help you. My Queen."

 

**Verse 19:11 — and my father was the dark**

Mara Sov is afraid. Even Sathona within her is afraid when they see the Dreadnaught approach, and the Awoken ships fire uselessly. When they remember the power of Oryx, and the Worm their God, and the Deep.

Tens of thousands of times, Oryx and Savathûn have killed each other in terrible, ferocious love. Never, in all that time, did Savathûn submit to being killed.

But this is the logic of the sword, of the Dark and the Deep: she must destroy Oryx. She must rend his life apart with her own hands, take possession of his sword, or be destroyed.

Mara Sov bows to no one. Not even that logic.

She raises her hands and calls upon the Harbingers.

(Her last thought is a wish that Uldren, out there in the chaos of battle, will be safe.)

 

**Verse 19:12 — the queen at the end of time**

Beyond the Veil is a place of black suns and purple fire. It is the path to Savathûn's throne world, and the Queen of the Awoken walks it. Quria's power is stronger here; occasionally she is caught by subroutines that cause her to multiply into a hundred variations, or that keep her repeating the same stretch of the path over and over. Encryptions attempt to render her into a string of static data suitable for long-term storage.

She finds a way.

At last she comes to Savathûn's throne world, to the many-toothed throne where Savathûn herself sits waiting, Quria shining and whirring at her feet, even now deceiving the Worm her God. Behind her rushes the void in a vast waterfall, muttering to itself about the business of space-time and causality.

"So," says Savathûn. "You've come back to make your report, Sathona."

"My name," says the Queen, "is Mara Sov."

"Interesting!" says Savathûn. "I thought even my past self would be strong enough to dominate those creatures we created."

"Sathona tricked you," says the Queen. "You created a race that was twice-paracausal, and left them in a place where they could meet with the children of the Sky. Did you think they wouldn't find a way to vanquish the Deep?"

Savathûn strokes a claw against the arm of her throne. "If you've killed Oryx, that proves him right."

"I did not kill Oryx," says the Queen.

Savathûn is still.

"I planted my Harbingers on his ship, to seed it against the future, but I did not kill Oryx. He killed me."

Quietly, Sathona's ghost is laughing.

"It was the Guardians I helped, the Guardians to whom I gave gifts as the Deep forbids. They killed Oxyx, they toppled the Taken King, and they left his throne unclaimed."

A great crack rends itself in the sky above them. Savathûn hisses, as if in anger. But there's a strange light in her eyes: the light of one who has lived billions of years, and yet at last sees something new.

"Let me tell you again, O slave to the worms. I am Mara Sov of the Awoken. Starlight was my mother and my father was the dark. I am your strict proof and final answer." She leans forward, fearless of the claws and eyes, the power of the Deep, the worm that slumbers. "And _I_ will be the queen at the end of time."

**Author's Note:**

> The Savathûn = Mara Sov theory comes from [this tumblr post](http://thexostranger.tumblr.com/post/129498169901/so-about-destinys-lore) and I can take no credit for it. 
> 
> This story was also inspired by these Grimoire cards: [Ghost Fragment: Awoken 2](http://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/ghost-fragment-awoken-2), [Ghost Fragment: Awoken 3](http://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/ghost-fragment-awoken-3), [Ghost Fragment: The Queen 2](http://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/ghost-fragment-the-queen-2), [The Coven](http://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/the-coven), [The Aftermath](http://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/the-aftermath), and all of the Books of Sorrow (JUST LEAVE ME HERE TO DIE)—but especially [XLIII: End of Failed Timeline](http://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/xliii-end-of-failed-timeline) and [XLIV: strict proof eternal](http://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/xliv-strict-proof-eternal). "The queen at the end of time" is a reference to [Ghost Fragment: Darkness](http://www.ishtar-collective.net/cards/ghost-fragment-darkness-3).


End file.
